Innovation within industry is a must to improve processes, products, and customer experience. Although some innovations, like Amazon’s floating distribution center, seem implausible, other sci-fi technology is already revolutionizing and redefining the way employees accomplish tasks.

Tales of manufacturing and servicing

“Across the durable goods industry there is tremendous volatility,” says Gary Brooks, CMO of Syncron, a global manufacturing and supply chain technology company. “One month, orders are up 4 percent and the next month they’re down 5 percent. This causes great financial challenges for manufacturers. However, while we’re seeing some declining margins and revenues on the product-based side of the house, on the after-sales service side, the margins are incredibly healthy. We typically see upward of 25 percent of a manufacturing company’s total revenues come from after-sales service.”

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Building airplanes and spaceships poses some of the most unique engineering and manufacturing challenges mankind has ever encountered. Fortunately, you don’t have to build rockets to benefit from rocket science. Manufacturers of most any product can improve their efficiency and profitability by studying some of the approaches the aerospace industry takes to overcome production obstacles such as waste, rework, and engineering changes.

SWaP-C factors

Composite-using organizations such as Spirit, GKN, Boeing, Airbus, Albany Engineered Composites, and SpaceX do not tend to share proprietary processes, but they do share common hurdles when it comes to engineering and manufacturing. Aerospace—and all other manufacturing verticals—must consider size, weight, power, and cost. And they must factor those elements into the scheme of a complete system or product.

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Founded in 1927 to produce aluminum splints—cutting edge at the time—Zimmer Biomet is a medical device company commanding second place in the entire world’s overall orthopedic market share. The organization’s stated purpose is to “Restore mobility, alleviate pain, and improve the quality of life for patients around the world.” For at least one Zimmer Biomet quality engineer, the nature of the company’s products and what it takes to manufacture them takes on a decidedly sensitive tone.

“For us, yes, we make great products, and yes, our company has a good stock price, but when you see a patient walking around with your product in them, it’s pretty compelling,” says Jeff Livingston, senior quality engineer at the Zimmer Biomet complex in Warsaw, Indiana. “I’ve done some pretty cool things in automotive, but what we do here is huge. Mostly it’s about regular folks just trying to live again, trying to get through life without pain.”